Tim Gokey, President and chief operating officer, Broadridge

Please give us a bit of background on yourself, and how your organisation plays a leadership role in the financial technology space.

I’m a 30 year veteran of the financial services industry. My career has spanned senior leadership roles in fintech, consumer financial services, and consulting. I started my career in consulting at McKinsey, where I was a partner in financial services. I served over two dozen Fortune 500 and 1000 companies and led the Firm’s North American Financial Services Sales and Marketing Practice. Later, I was President of the Tax business at H&R Block. In 2010, I joined Broadridge, a fintech leader that powers investing, governance, and communications for capital markets, wealth management, and public companies globally. At Broadridge, I oversee all our business units and our overall growth strategy.

Broadridge’s SaaS technology platforms support 2/3 of U.S. fixed income and a large proportion of North American and global equities. We support every public company’s Board of Directors meeting, and we touch 85% of U.S. households for transactional communications. We are playing a leading role in introducing disruptive technologies to digitize communications, apply blockchain to corporate elections, and integrate robotics and AI into our cloud-based, next-generation SaaS platforms for global capital markets, wealth management, and asset managers.

How well are financial companies adapting to the coming of age phase of Fintech development? Where are the opportunities, and where are the roadblocks still?

Most leading financial services players are investing in proprietary fintech solutions and/or exploring potential collaborative opportunities to enhance their capabilities. For instance, many firms are evaluating ways to effectively deploy cloud computing to boost efficiency and use AI create better client or advisor experiences and/or automate costly middle- and back-office processes. On the challenge side, large global banks are still facing heavy regulatory and cost pressures that are weighing on their ability to beat their cost of capital. As a result, these institutions are increasingly seeking partnerships that allow them to leverage new technologies. These relationships enable them to achieve a network effect – the ability to mutualize costs and enhance capabilities by leveraging the scale of a broader community.

What challenges do you see for Fintech maturation, and how will your businesses help deliver future financial success?

While the industry has made great strides in leveraging fintech to transform business solutions, challenges can and have arisen as firms must in some cases walk a tight rope when deciding whether to build new capabilities internally and take on the cost burden and human capital associated with these efforts or whether to partner with firms that have the scale and ability to effectively ramp up these offerings. There is also a regulatory factor at play as regulators must continue to remain vigilant, but also foster an environment in which institutions can experiment and develop new concepts.

As a global fintech provider, Broadridge plays a critical role in partnering with financial institutions to develop and leverage innovative technologies that enable them to overcome their business challenges. We are very focused on helping institutions eliminate paper while enhancing their clients’ experience. We help our clients and other industry participants to leverage a shared technology platform to reduce capital and risk. We are also exploring ways to leverage blockchain to enhance corporate governance by increasing efficiency and boosting transparency.

What will you be discussing at The Economist's Finance Disrupted Conference?

I will be speaking on the lunch panel titled “Re-architecting financial services: fintech meets the enterprise.” I plan to address the coming wave of digitization as well as best practices that financial services firms can implement to successfully embed fintech into their business models, particularly with respect to how to decide when to partner vs. build internally to best drive business results.